With Between Revolutions, by Vlad Petri, Time of History has added this Tuesday a new title to the competition. Two revolutions hover over this work that hybridizes documentary and fiction, the Iranian one at the end of the 70s that overthrew the Shah and the one lived a decade later in Romania that ended with Ceaușescu’s regime.
Faced with the different possible ways of approaching historical events, Petri has opted for what he considered to be the most «poetic», by constructing the story from the letters of two women.
The director acknowledged that his first intention was to approach the film as a conventional documentary, but as he entered into the story he realized that it would be easier to connect with the audience with this «more intimate» formula that allows the epistolary relationship between the two women.
Working with historians for documentation allowed the Romanian director to learn about real correspondence with which the two revolutions could be told. He gave himself «the freedom to recreate those letters, in many cases censored by the police, because they were not even allowed to express their feelings».
Although the final reading of Between Revolutions leaves an aftertaste of failure regarding those revolutionary processes, Vlad Petri wanted to send the optimistic message that maybe another revolution can be successful if one is careful about who is given the power.
